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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25792309">the worth of his ambitions (the Nico Rosberg monologue on his own life)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySpearWife/pseuds/LadySpearWife'>LadySpearWife</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Formula 1 RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst, Character Study, F/M, Faustian Bargain, Gen, Introspection, Magical Realism, mild body horror, other people mentioned - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:14:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,370</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25792309</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySpearWife/pseuds/LadySpearWife</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Do you want to win?</i> It asked, wearing Michael Schumacher’s face and his baby blue overalls. First German driver to secure the championship. Benetton. 94, 95.</p><p>Nico said <i>yes</i>, of course.</p><p><i>How much?</i> It asked, sliding into Fangio.</p><p>Nico said <i>a lot</i>, of course.</p><p><i>I’m sure you do, boy</i>. It flickered between Senna and Prost, and the smile remained the same. He wasn’t the brightest, but he knew there were too many teeth.</p><p>Alternatively titled, Nico Rosberg and the altar where he guts dreams to pay for his ambition.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lewis Hamilton &amp; Nico Rosberg, Nico Rosberg/Vivian Sibold</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the worth of his ambitions (the Nico Rosberg monologue on his own life)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The reporter smiles, amicable and innocent, and Nico has time to think <em>fuck</em> before the question lands like out-braking himself into the barriers.</p><p>(Not that he can still out-brake himself into the barriers.)</p><p>“So, about Lewis Hamilton –”</p><p><em>Fuck</em>, indeed.</p><p> </p><p>Nico is four when he drives for the first time.</p><p>Now with Alaïa and Naila, who have around the same age he had, he can’t understand how the hell his father let him. He shrugs a lot, especially when mother throws an exasperated half smile and pointed sigh at him, which isn’t an answer.</p><p><em>He wanted to</em> can’t be a reasonable reply.</p><p>Since <em>reasonable</em> doesn’t run in their blood, though, it must be honest.</p><p>Nico doesn’t remember that day in Ibiza as much as he remembers falling in love with driving. Memories happen to stick around for the silliest or grandest of reasons.</p><p>And he’s also four when his magic manifests.</p><p>Compared to the thrill of driving, of getting his hands into karts and being towed around small tracks, it didn’t leave a mark. His father says he wanted to go faster, and the little chicane meant to slow overambitious children down disappeared.</p><p><em>Poof</em>.</p><p>His father tells many stories. Nico isn’t sure in which ones he believes in.</p><p>With the damage he caused as an older child, however, it sounds fair.</p><p>And someone should’ve worried more about teaching him restraint.</p><p>They gave him the best, his parents. However, if a blessed soul had bothered to say <em>stop wanting things so hard</em>, tragedy might’ve been avoided.</p><p>Including, well, Lewis.</p><p> </p><p>You see, coming second or worse doesn’t bother Nico for a long time.</p><p>He’s a flighty child.</p><p>There’re languages and school subjects and other sports to distract him from the sting of loss. His father ruffling his hair and his mother praising him to soften the sad afternoons. Sunny vacations where he’s never bored. Friends to play with.</p><p>Nico decides he’ll be a Formula One champion, and his life changes.</p><p>(Formula One is the start and end of many, many tragedies, not only his own.)</p><p>Aged twelve and proud.</p><p>Instead of a childhood fantasy, born from being Keke Rosberg’s son, it’s a vow.</p><p>His wildest promise.</p><p><em>Second place</em> becomes poison. French Manufacturers' Trophy and the Côte d'Azur Regional linger in his head when he goes to sleep, bitter and stolen.</p><p>Nico doesn’t remember who won those.</p><p>He remembers lying in his bed at night and wanting so much he thought he was going to burn himself alive. Turning and tossing until dawn. Frowning to the trophies his mother insisted on showing everyone – she was an interpreter.</p><p>Competition and bitterness didn’t suit her.</p><p>His father rolled his eyes at him.</p><p>(Keke Rosberg refused to suffer fools and martyrs.)</p><p>
  <em>God above, Nico, stop thinking so much about defeat.</em>
</p><p>He couldn’t.</p><p>The International Schools of Monaco and Nice taught him control, technique, how to develop his magic. Not restraint, though. Not how to tame the ugly thing he had inside his heart when he couldn’t go faster, drive smarter, brake later.</p><p>Wanting is a dangerous thing when you have magic like his.</p><p>He went to sleep once, he remembers, having hidden all the trophies that didn’t show perfect results. Success or nothing. Success or nothing. Success or nothing.</p><p>And he dreamed.</p><p>(Nico <em>thinks</em> he dreamed.)</p><p>The thing in his dream smiled wide and sharp.</p><p>It took him to a track.</p><p>Monaco, maybe. The blackness of the asphalt stuck more than where.</p><p><em>Do you want to win?</em> It asked, wearing Michael Schumacher’s face and his baby blue overalls. First German driver to secure the championship. Benetton. 94, 95.</p><p>Nico said <em>yes</em>, of course.</p><p><em>How much? </em>It asked, sliding into Fangio.</p><p>Nico said <em>a lot</em>, of course.</p><p><em>I’m sure you do, boy</em>. It flickered between Senna and Prost, and the smile remained the same. He wasn’t the brightest, but he knew there were too many teeth.</p><p>Nico challenged it to make him succeed, of course.</p><p><em>Will you pay your price?</em> It asked, laughing.</p><p>(Keke Rosberg, world champion, first Finnish to make it.</p><p>Father who looks at him with damning hopes he dreads not meeting.)</p><p>Nico said <em>yes</em> again, of course.</p><p>It ran a finger over his cheek, hot and greasy. He stood still and let it. Nico has always been good at judging risk. He’s terrible at restraining himself, at not <em>wanting</em>, but he doesn’t make moves that will kick him out of the race. Patience, patience, patience.</p><p>The problem –</p><p>Rewards can outshine danger.</p><p>And Nico wants to win enough to forget all his lessons. Deals have riddles, and victory spells have teeth – every athlete is aware they can lose control of it.</p><p>A bite too big to stop the bleeding.</p><p>Nico wasn’t an athlete.</p><p>He was a child who couldn’t stand comparisons and failure.</p><p>His mother sighed, disappointed, and grabbed a cloth to wash off the motor oil from his face when he came for breakfast. She could see auras and glimpses of the future, not magic in action. <em>Oh my, Nico, where you went in the middle of the night?</em></p><p>Father couldn’t do magic.</p><p>The arrangement went unnoticed for many, many years.</p><p> </p><p>Every time Nico wins, there’s oil on his cheek.</p><p>A familiar, malicious, gleeful stare on his back.</p><p> </p><p>Nico Rosberg becomes a Formula One driver in 2006.</p><p>His first podium arrives in 2008. He wants to ask you to forget every footage that doesn’t involve his racing. Including the ceremony. Especially the ceremony.</p><p>He wins his first race in 2012.</p><p>And his championship in 2016.</p><p>End of the story.</p><p><em>Except</em> –</p><p>He’s had more teammates, alright?</p><p>Mark Webber, Alexander Wurz, Kazuki Nakajima, <em>Michael fucking Schumacher</em>.</p><p>Not many –</p><p><em>Fine</em>.</p><p>Nico doesn’t remember meeting Lewis.</p><p>It bothers him. A thousand memories inhabit the corners of his mind, stubborn and relentless, taking him in sharp turns through the past he’d rather forget. But this one never comes. Their first words to each other, their first impressions.</p><p>In 2000, they become teammates for the first time.</p><p>His father’s meddling, as most things are in the beginning of his career.</p><p>Lewis Hamilton is small, has a gap between his front teeth and keeps his head shaved. He speaks English and a shitty French. At first glance, unremarkable.</p><p>At second, too.</p><p>He’s, incidentally, the best competition Nico ever had.</p><p>And the most frighteningly driven person he knows, even today.</p><p>They race each other on track and to see who can eat pizza the fastest and on everything else. Lewis doesn’t lose with grace and is hellish when he triumphs.</p><p>(An important addition:</p><p>Lewis Hamilton is as talented in curses as he's in racing, which means exactly most people imagine when they hear that about a six-times world champion.</p><p>In 2015, he admits knowing Nico made a crappy deal since they were kids.</p><p>2015 is a year of too many open wounds.)</p><p>As far as friendships go, they manage to have fun. Their own stupidity and endless competitiveness aside, they made good memories. If nothing else, he’s allowed to keep the tentative, blurry pictures of a childhood he killed too son.</p><p>Lewis wins the Formula A.</p><p>Nico comes second.</p><p>Who thought making them teammates was a good idea?</p><p>He invites him to eat pizza the next day, smiling earnestly, tongue poking out on the gap between his teeth. Magnanimous and beatific and victorious. Nico saves calling Lewis an asshole for special occasions. It’d be tiring otherwise. Missing out on the 2014 title, crashing into each other in Spain, being shaken awake at five am in the middle of their vacation in goddamn Ibiza because <em>it’s a long drive to the nearest Anglican church</em>.</p><p>That’s one of those moments.</p><p>Nico spent the night watching the thing.</p><p>It was in the corner of his room and didn’t bother to steal any face but Nico’s own. Young, long hair – it got the eyes and the smile wrong, though.</p><p>Cold fire.</p><p>Too many teeth.</p><p>He couldn’t sleep with it there.</p><p><em>I wanted to win</em>, he said.</p><p>It laughed.</p><p>
  <em>You’ll.</em>
</p><p>Lewis has an uncanny talent for unmaking curses and rotten spells. He doesn’t see auras but trades and blessings and misfortunes. At fifteen or sixteen, Nico already knew he might’ve made a mistake. Saying it aloud, however, proved to be harder.</p><p>The thing wouldn’t be happy.</p><p>Oil on his face, on his hands, in his <em>mouth</em>.</p><p>He says he has a headache.</p><p>Lewis scoffs and calls him a bad loser, filled with both adolescent sharpness and earned ego, a glint of frustration in his eyes. Nico rages. Mother frowns.</p><p>
  <em>Don’t be sullen, baby. He’s your friend.</em>
</p><p>Nico learns to stand migraines and never leaves a chair empty in his bedroom.</p><p>Precautions.</p><p> </p><p>The novelty of being Michael Schumacher’s teammates wears off soon.</p><p>Michael is an <em>asshole</em>.</p><p>Dangerously intelligent and technical, yes, picking apart their car with a critical eye and a merciless perfectionism, demanding the best without shame. It doesn’t erase how irritating it is to share a garage with his tactics. Nico can’t stand him, most times.</p><p>Still, while Mercedes is better than Williams, it’s not a championship winner yet.</p><p>So he finds himself sharing drinks with a seven-time world champion in the Thursdays after press and trying to toe away his shiny rows of mind games.</p><p>(It’s Michael. They come with the package.)</p><p>There’re stranger situations to find himself in.</p><p>More uncomfortable? Hard to say.</p><p>Michael grins crookedly, not malevolent but with a certain glee that screams he heard a joke, and you’re the punchline. With him, who can be sure?</p><p><em>You made a pact</em>, he says in China, sipping the hotel’s weak beer.</p><p>It could be either an accusation or a compliment.</p><p>Nico finishes his too sweet drink and ponders.</p><p>Michael Schumacher has as much magic as a shoe.</p><p>Which means nothing.</p><p>Which means he <em>can’t</em> say what Nico does and doesn’t have. Not for sure. Not unless someone told him. He shifts in his chair. Making people uncomfortable is a talent of his. Unsettling the competition enough to make them waver and think twice.</p><p>Hesitating near Michael is like hesitating near a bloodthirsty shark.</p><p><em>So do you</em>, he accuses.</p><p>Nico can’t see deals. And yet, rumors about Schumacher’s extensive list of contracts, blessings and curses are ruthless. With those records, there’s a chance.</p><p>Michael smiles.</p><p>(Lewis tells him he has a small one.</p><p>It’s 2013, weeks after the accident, and Nico is emotional about the old man with his merciless games. To say he believes Lewis’ affirmation is a lie, but he’d prefer keeping the memories of him untouched. All efficiency and alarmingly confident smi.es</p><p>Mika offers him an anecdote, though.</p><p>And Nico trusts Mika to be honest.</p><p>Michael Schumacher called him at 3 am after the Spanish Grand Prix of 1999 saying he needed help to make a deal. Gina was two, Mick had a couple of months, and he was going crazy with sleeplessness with a toddler and a newborn and a career that kept odd hours. It explains more than people who didn’t know him imagine.</p><p>And it’s a nice story.</p><p>Nico carries his rotten deal around and hopes it won’t fuck him up.)</p><p> </p><p>He loses more than he wins – oh, Nico manages to stun and drag awe from cold hearts. People wonder, though, if Rosberg’s son is any good with so many failures.</p><p>Or if he’s another spoiled kid who paid to be here and refused to leave.</p><p>Did surname open that many doors?</p><p>The thing inhabits the corners of his bedroom with Vivian. It sneers and laughs.</p><p>Is this what he asked for?</p><p> </p><p>He drives a Williams that can’t challenge for a championship.</p><p>There’re a podiums and moments to remember. People hold their breaths, hoping once Nico clinches a better spot, he’s going to show a new, awe-inspiring trick.</p><p>And he drives a Mercedes.</p><p>It’s not fast enough to chase the top of the world, either.</p><p>(<em>Not yet</em>.)</p><p>Those are the Vettel golden years. If there’s anyone more fucked than him, it’s Vettel. He smiles brightly, genially, and doesn’t seem to hear the thundering jeers.</p><p>They call him a cheater.</p><p>He has deals wrapped around his wrists, chains of iron and his own making, and a hungry vulture trailing after his steps. In the worst days, it wears a young, handsome face Nico will recognize one day. Vettel cursed himself for this unrivaled golden age.</p><p>The consequences are going to be a bitch.</p><p>Etcetera, etcetera.</p><p>Lewis dances around the question when Nico asks. Says he hopes <em>Sebastian</em> learns how to be satisfied, that people will be kind to him in the future. It’s oddly specific.</p><p>Nico discovers they like each other with this halved admission.</p><p>And doesn’t ask what Lewis thought was going to happen with him.</p><p>His opinions on buying success with anything other than sweat and driving your heart out fall into easy predictability. Lewis believes in effort and passion. Not technicality, not Nico’s passionless takes on the car, not any deal with small print.</p><p>The announcement of the Mercedes lineup is going to break soon.</p><p>One victory isn’t enough to quell the inferno burning inside his veins, expanding and contracting like his heart.</p><p> </p><p>Nico goes to sleep and dreams of tracks.</p><p>Monza, Albert Park, Interlagos, Suzuka, Spa – coated with History and death.</p><p>The asphalt sprawls, black and endless.</p><p>He stands in the middle of the track. Marshals wave green flags, and the amorphous mass of fans in the stands scream, frantic and euphoric, nearing insanity.</p><p>There’s a car coming in his direction.</p><p>He can’t see which one, too fast, but Nico doesn’t need to look to know who’s driving – every champion has run over him. The dream’s favorite is either Michael, his father or Lewis. And no matter who it is, they speed up on the straight, vicious.</p><p>Nico wakes a moment after being thrown to die.</p><p>Vivian looks at him with wide, horrified eyes and flinches. In soulless hotels in this eternal trip of a career, the thing itself floats above his face, grinning.</p><p>Shapeless and black with too many teeth inside its mouth.</p><p>
  <em>You should react faster, Nico, or you’ll become prey.</em>
</p><p>Isn’t he already?</p><p> </p><p>2013 –</p><p>2013 is a good year.</p><p>Nico takes Lewis around Brackley and Brixworth, and they go around the paddock with their heads bent, talking about the car, about their chances.</p><p><em>Next year</em>, they promise each other.</p><p>Next year is going to be good.</p><p>And yet –</p><p>You see, Sepang brings out the worst in teammates.</p><p>He’s told to lower his head and stay in fourth. Nico does.</p><p>Lewis admits it later with an uncomfortable sigh. He shouldn’t have gotten the podium. Nico deserved it more. Team orders are team orders, though.</p><p>(Inside his head, Michael snorts.)</p><p>The thing spends an entire night laughing, gleeful and cruel, right at his ear.</p><p>This isn’t what Nico wanted.</p><p>But Vettel puts a knife in Webber’s back and walks around surprised people find it hateful. <em>Multi 21, Sebastian</em> erases everything else about the race, and the signs of an oncoming implosion go by unnoticed. Leave drama for the champions.</p><p>And talking about champions –</p><p> </p><p>Mercedes builds a car to make the hybrid era theirs.</p><p>It sings under them.</p><p>The unbeatable, perfect Silver Arrow on a fumbling grid.</p><p>With no competition, it’s between Lewis and he to fight. And they fight. Fight and star at every headline – fraught relationships, childhood friendships poisoned.</p><p>Ongoing war.</p><p>Unmanageable drivers.</p><p>Toto looks at them, tearing himself apart and trying to make them form an unsteady alliance and to stop with public declarations of hatred. Friendship can be spared, except it’s staining the image of the team, and they should be professional.</p><p>They’re not professional.</p><p>2014 is the year of forbidden engine modes and accusations.</p><p>(Did you run deep at the Mirabeau on purpose, Nico?</p><p>Were you angry Lewis disobeyed team orders, Nico?</p><p>Did you take your teammate out of the race deliberately, Nico?)</p><p>Nico tries to punch Lewis after the accusations in Spa. Lewis smirks.</p><p>He’s passionate.</p><p><em>Emotional</em>.</p><p>For the best of humanitarian acts and the worst cruelties, he uses his heart.</p><p><em>I don’t understand why you’re so angry, aren’t all those gifts exactly what you wanted?</em> If he’s talking about the crash or the pact, Nico doesn’t know.</p><p>Ruined hotel rooms and such.</p><p>In a last agreement, not a word of this goes out to the press.</p><p>Nico can’t win the title and spends a night locked up in his room, staring at the thing as it swings its many legs. It’s floating above his bed. <em>Nico Nico Nico Nico</em>, it sings, and its voice carries the same poison as Lewis’ did when he tried to lunge at him.</p><p>Fuck 2014.</p><p> </p><p>What is there to say about 2015?</p><p>Nico walks around with his shoulders too heavy, eyes dropping closed with sleeplessness. Most of his dreams don’t end after the crash anymore, and he spends hours looking at the sky and screaming. The thing is everywhere he looks.</p><p>And Alaïa is a fussy baby.</p><p>Forgive him for being distracted, for slowing down, for not fighting hard enough.</p><p>Lewis conquers his third title.</p><p>Whatever he says or does – one step too far, the cap – echoes hollow.</p><p>Nico comes second again.</p><p>Does anyone care about the testimony of silver medals and defeated rivals?</p><p> </p><p>The Hamilton Interlude.</p><p>Lewis discovers Nico Rosberg doesn’t lose with grace before he sees him for the first time and notices the gaping chasm leaking motor oil on his cheek.</p><p>That’s not this story.</p><p>(Karting prodigies can smell fear from kilometers like bloodhounds and expose each other’s wounds to anyone who might be able to destroy a career. Nico is the son of a champion and a good racer, so it’s old news he’s a terrible loser.)</p><p>His father slaves away in jobs that blur into each other to pay for his career.</p><p><em>It has to be earned</em> is what Lewis gets from such sacrifice.</p><p>Everyone’s sacrifice.</p><p>He digs both feet on the ground and challenges anyone to take him down.</p><p>Lingering on defeat is useless.</p><p>It slows him.</p><p>Lewis Hamilton, aged thirteen, walks towards Ron Dennis and says he’ll drive one of his cars. It takes a decade, but he does. Wins a championship with it.</p><p>Lewis Hamilton, aged thirteen, dodges a rotten agreement.</p><p>This thing, shapeless and black like factory smoke, has been hounding his dream since he, smiling, stated his ambitions of driving a McLaren. It asks if he wants to be the best. It says it can help if he pays the right price. It talks sweetly and for hours.</p><p>In the first dream, it takes him to Imola.</p><p>To a corner remade years ago.</p><p>It tries to appeal to the heart in the wrong ways.</p><p>His eyes are good, his mother used to say.</p><p>The thing has oily tendrils spreading from its back, reaching out to every soul it captured. It smiles with teeth. It’s trying to pretend to be another person.</p><p>(Who else?)</p><p>With him, the glamour is useless.</p><p>Good eyes, right?</p><p>When he says <em>let me go</em>, it keeps him roaming around Imola for days. Ages. Entire fuzzy centuries. His father shouts at him for being late for his classes.</p><p>It tries to get him again when he’s having ice cream.</p><p>The thing is persistent.</p><p>Lewis can be worse.</p><p>And he has a competitive streak to shame otherworldly beings.</p><p>Enough to dodge a rotten deal.</p><p>His father comes back from work and says they can afford another competition.</p><p>It has to be earned.</p><p>He goes and wins it.</p><p>Most of his adult life is spent rolling his eyes when his mirror show snow-white dogs with red foam in their mouths instead of saliva and war instead of hearts instead of his image. Getting Daniel to teach him how to drag himself from magical dreams when a woman with three heads and teary eyes gets too persistent. Never making small talk.</p><p>It’s tempting, though.</p><p>When Lewis gets a spot in McLaren, he wants to impress. This need gnaws at him through day and night, relentless and pitiless. <em>Yes</em> dances at the tip of his tongue.</p><p>He wants to beat Alonso, and his anger almost convinces him to give in.</p><p>In the nuclear winter of Sebastian’s golden years, swallowing constant defeat, dreaming of another title and failing to see an end to his domination, Lewis stares at the gleeful thing for hours through the night until he manages to spit a <em>fuck off</em>.</p><p>Nico’s deal tugs at the edges of his mind, full of thorns.</p><p>Sebastian’s burdens his mind with useless weight, and it’ll cost him everything else he might’ve wanted for the future of his career. A noose instead of an open way.</p><p><em>It has to be earned</em>, Lewis tells himself, biding his time.</p><p>Tire management and coming first both take patience.</p><p>When they see <em>blessed</em> tattooed near his ear, they imagine pacts.</p><p>It’s hard to explain common faith to a paddock overtaken by deals and curses and the other styles of blessings. Lewis doesn’t try anymore.</p><p>He wins.</p><p>And wins.</p><p>Races records instead of other drivers and tells powerful entities to shut up.</p><p>It takes more determination than people imagine.</p><p> </p><p>They see Nico’s anger in the U.S.</p><p>They don’t see him curled on the floor with motor oil for sweat, the thing running its sharp, greasy hand over his hair. He’ll need a shower after.</p><p>One, two, <em>many</em> showers.</p><p>The world twists into a kaleidoscope of horrors, and he shakes.</p><p>Nico has many dreadful visions.</p><p>Edges and corners and places where he could die. 800 kilos of carbon and resentment for a grave instead of polished wood and old age.</p><p>Places where he could’ve won and didn’t.</p><p>The gold glint of trophies going to other people.</p><p>His oldest companion snorts.</p><p>
  <em>A little patience, Nico, a little patience. You told me you’d pay the price.</em>
</p><p>Its claws reek of burnt tire and hopelessness.</p><p>They’re so sharp they can tear his scalp open, and Nico doesn’t know if he could get up and ask for help. Will his shivering, weak limbs even work?</p><p>
  <em>Next year will be yours, don’t doubt. Next year will be yours.</em>
</p><p>(In the morning, Toto looks at him and asks where he was. What he did to look so terrible and so broken. It’s an empty comfort to have a single soul notice how hollow he is. Nico isn’t sure if anyone believes he says he was at his room, though.</p><p><em>Screaming while my personal demon tore me apart</em>, he doesn’t say.)</p><p>Alaïa is growing too fast.</p><p>Every time he comes back, she’s bigger and speaking new words.</p><p>Walking faster and faster.</p><p>Vivian is talking of another child, of opening a creamery.</p><p>She tucks her worry under her habitual lightheartedness. They walked of big families and family-owned business when they were younger. It’s natural to come back.</p><p>If he can win next year, he’s going to give her everything she wants.</p><p>If he can win next year, he’s going to stop caring about being second.</p><p><em>If</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Nico clings to its constant reassuring.</p><p><em>It’s yours, Nico,</em> the thing after every free practice, quali and race. He loses a few, makes fumbling mistakes, but tearing himself apart to win delivers results.</p><p>People laugh about Spain.</p><p>Lewis and he tried to scream each other to death there.</p><p>And failed to pretend to be chastised.</p><p>2016 wasn’t a year for apologies and rationality. Not when it meant everything.</p><p>Nico sends a bottle of good wine to Toto every Christmas. If asked, he talks about good memories, a title, all his help to become a better man. The truth, he’s never seen someone so close to a heart attack as his team manager after Austria.</p><p>His parents raised polite, even if unable to exercise restraint.</p><p>(Lewis can buy forgiveness with a string of titles and records.)</p><p>What’s there to say about 2016?</p><p>People will wax poetically and curse at Lewis for playing dirty to try and throw him to the lions in Abu Dhabi. Nico smiles. Neither of them are above tactics. The curse of every champion is being able to go to unimaginable lengths for a chance of victory.</p><p>Nico wins.</p><p>It’s the racing equivalent of getting the last word in an argument by leaving.</p><p>Does he care?</p><p>When the places where speed used to be ache, left empty.</p><p>When he thinks of how much more he could’ve done without his bones grinding and his eyes heavy. Without the ever-present exhaustion of the competition.</p><p>But Nico wins.</p><p>He screams himself raw, laughing in a haze of gold and happiness.</p><p>Turns out, he isn’t a failure.</p><p>Can leave with his head held high because you need to be a phenomenon of another class to earn a championship. Being good isn’t enough to touch the sky.</p><p>And being fast can’t keep a seat in this bloodbath of a sport.</p><p>Nico wins.</p><p>How can anyone blame him for riding the wave of this victory forever?</p><p>His fingers bleed white as he holds onto the trophy, and second place has never tasted sweeter in a race. Champagne is tacky and tastes awful, and he feels sticky even after a shower, but Nico wants to remember it sparkling as he sprayed it.</p><p>Overjoyed.</p><p>Satisfied.</p><p>Winner.</p><p> </p><p>The thing asks, a couple of nights later, if he’s ready for more.</p><p>Nico announces his retirement five days after clinching the title.</p><p>And he’s not surprised at what the press says – he wants to leave on a high, he won’t be able to fight against Hamilton again, he’s a coward, he’s giving up.</p><p>(Sure, it might be true.)</p><p> </p><p>Nico breaths in.</p><p>The light setup blinds him, bright enough to distort the world into strange, new shapes. Everything’s washed out and pale. The reporter smiles, expectant and ravenous, all teeth. As far as omens go, this one could go to his biography as the most uncreative.</p><p>“Do you think he’s the best pilot out there?”</p><p>(Frankly, there’re worse questions to be asked about Lewis.</p><p>If they’re friends again, if they still hate each other, if they were <em>close</em> with oozing second intentions, if he has anything left to say, if he wants to talk about the past.)</p><p>“I do, of course. The numbers speak for themselves.”</p><p>Nico Rosberg learned how to concede defeat.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>what is this? not sure. really not sure. it wrote itself in five hours like i was possessed by a demon. loads of fun facts here brought by the hamilton-rosberg rivalry wikipedia article. nico rosberg really drove a jeep at 4 with his dad</p><p>toss a comment to your writer, oh valley of plentyyyyy</p><p>but really thank you for reading this!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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